A Compact Beamforming Concept Based on Element-to-Element Mixing for 5G Applications

摘要

Recent studies focus on exploring the untouched millimeter-wave spectrum as it offers more bandwidth and higher data rates. Nevertheless, the high losses, power consumption, and cost of RF components at such frequencies remain prohibitive. In this paper, we present a novel compact beamforming concept using self-mixing techniques in an effort to downsize the overall number of RF components required and achieve higher efficiency. To do so, we introduce a novel analog beamforming method based on element-to-element mixing (BEEM) with flexibility in signal reception for any angle of arrival (AoA). Preliminary evaluation of the proposed BEEM topology is presented here. More specifically, we have conducted simulations with 16-quadrature amplitude modulation (16-QAM) to evaluate our beamforming concept. Simulations show that phase delay cancellation as well as coherent summation can be achieved using our BEEM topology, implying a near-theoretical diversity gain.